If you reach a conclusion that it is too late to prevent massive disruption, or even collapse, of the society that you live within, then you will likely experience some emotional pain about that for the rest of your life. Such psychological distress is even prior to experiencing specific disruptions from the direct and indirect impacts of a degrading environment and growing public anxieties. Those disruptions are often explained in mass media without mention of our degrading environment.
Yet if you look behind the headlines, there is credible evidence that rising prices, coronaviruses, financial instability, mental illness, displaced persons and xenophobia are being made worse by the declining health and stability of our natural world. To anticipate societal collapse means one feels personally vulnerable as well as afraid for the future of people dear to us. Faced with such difficult emotions it can be easier to ignore for a time. But that becomes difficult when more people are talking about collapse. So, if the people discussing collapse can be admonished for being wrong, marginal, bad or counterproductive, then others can resist their perspective for a little longer. However, that resistance could be damaging to society by reducing the time people have to explore what emotions they are suppressing, the disruptions that await us, and so what could be done to help reduce harm.
Although one can argue against it, anticipating societal collapse is not necessarily wrong, marginal, bad or counterproductive. Such a collapse due, in part, to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change is a debatable but plausible perspective. As climatologist Dr Wolfgang Knorr has explained, climate scientists “have only a very superficial understanding of how vulnerable our modern society is to climate chaos and unexpected climate-related events." Despite those limitations, there is new research that indicates abrupt climate change is already impacting on agriculture. That is why some leading climate scientists have said “it’s time to talk about near-term collapse.”
